Regulatory Creep

This New York Times article on the controversy that’s been a-brewin’ over the push for government-mandated licensing requirements for yoga instructors is a prime piece of head-scratching high comedy. When I first saw the headline I assumed the story would fall into the familiar pattern of cooperation between government and cartel, wherein the established and well-connected representatives of an industry prevail on government officials to pass and enforce official standards that will strengthen their position, by raising barriers to entry and posing additional burdens on their competitors. As it turns out, though, seemingly no one in the multibillion-dollar yoga industry is happy with having their voluntary standards turned into state-sponsored licensing requirements; teachers and students alike claimed that such standardization and oversight runs directly counter to the essence of the practice, and have joined together to lobby and protest to keep the regulatory state at bay.

No, in this case the regulators managed to act as self-moved movers, called to action by the perfect combination of the ever-pressing need to protect citizens from themselves and the sweet smell of taxpayer dollars:

Regulators said licensing the schools would allow states to enforce basic standards and protect customers who usually spend $2,000 to $5,000 on training courses, not to mention provide revenue for cash-starved governments. “If you’re going to start a school and take people’s money, you should play by a set of rules,” said Patrick Sweeney, a Wisconsin licensing official, who believes that in 2004 he was the first to discover the online registry and use it to begin regulating yoga teaching.

“Sooner or later, probably every state will do this,” said Patricia Kearney, an instructor of health and exercise science at Bridgewater College in Virginia, who has been researching the trend. “Once people get used to it, it will ultimately benefit yoga. But it will not be without loss. Some good small programs will close. But so will some not-so-good programs that probably should close.”

Hear that? It’s all for the better! So up and away with the consolidation of the yoga industry, the wishes of its members be damned; it’s better inner peace through rules and regulation, y’all.

I know only as much about this as you’ve written…but is it possible that regulation is also being pushed by related businesses that compete with yoga instructors or that would be the beneficiary of regs heavily restricting yoga instructors? Like, say, big gyms and sports clubs? IIRC, something similar is what happened with the push to regulate bikini waxing here in NJ.

It just seems like yoga is a pretty odd and random choice for a source of licensing revenue and nanny-statism.

Freddie’s response notes that crappy physical trainers can cause very real injuries. Plus, there’s plenty of them to provide a source of income for the state. But private physical trainers tend to frequently work for big gyms…..

Those are helpful points, Mark. I hope to reply to Freddie’s post, but the main things I’d note are just that erecting state-enforced barriers to entry both makes it harder for people to find employment in that line of work and makes it that much more expensive to hire a physical trainer; it’s certainly possible to argue that the attendant safety benefits are worth the costs, but there’s no denying that it’s primarily people on the lower rungs who would be the most inconvenienced.

Oh, I’m not advocating licensing of physical trainers….as you know, I’m pretty well opposed to licensing of just about any profession. I’m just saying that if the state was really looking for a source of revenue or for something where there was arguably a problem to solve, physical trainers would make a much more logical target than yoga instructors. Which is why I strongly suspect that the targeting of yoga is less-than-random and driven at least in part by a rival industry with some fairly powerful players. IOW – I have some suspicions that this is not ultimately a government-driven idea.

But any standard makes it harder for people to find employment in a line of work. I’d argue that they are still useful and desirable Are regulatory barriers especially onerous in this regard? It feels pretty weird having this discussion in the context of yoga.

OK we’ve had some laughs but revenue from Yoga Instructors? Remember that the state governments must now higher Yoga licensing staff, including field inspectors. Hmmmm. sounds like an agreeable job.

But seriously, this kind of nonsense comes from legislator’s staffs scanning newspapers. Someone writes an expose about fat suburban women throwing their backs out doing Yoga. Of course this generates lawsuits and the attention of “Consumer Advocates.” So staffers see an opportunity to have their guy do something about a problem that interests Oprah Winfrey views/democratic women voters. It sounds cynical but this is how this sort of idiocy happens.

No, but neither is it useful or desirable for people to die on operating tables when it could be prevented by standards enforced through oversight. The question is not ‘shall we have standards?’, the question is ‘who shall enforce them?’.

Yoga schools should also provide training in automatic weapons. The National Rifle Association would then spend zillions of dollars bribing government officials to do away with any meaningful regulation. Yoga doesn’t kill people, people kill people.

The question is not ’shall we have standards?’, the question is ‘who shall enforce them?’.

Agreed. Professional cartels can have whatever internal standards they want; my only objection is to their getting the government to enforce them across the board at the point of a gun, so that the cartel gets state-sponsored monopoly power.

Fear mongering is at the heart of most of these frivolous and cartel-producing regulatory measures. I know some yoga instructors. They’re great people, great instructors. Guess what? If they weren’t – or if they were doing a lousy job or a lousier job than someone else – people would stop going to them, or they would be let go from whatever gym or yoga center they were instructing at. Thus we are allowed to regulate ourselves. Certainly a similar rule does not apply to those who operate on our hearts or our spines – but I think it could work on those same people who stitch our cuts, or tell us that the cough we have will go away in five days and to drink some tea and get lots of rest….

I think that a large part of the problem is that there is a serious information imbalance in most of these situations between service provider and consumer. That is, most of the fields where there are licensing criteria are fields in which the providers purportedly have some kind of extensive specialist knowledge, and so the consumer has to place a lot of trust in the provider’s word that he knows what he is talking about. It is a rather large burden to place on consumers, to tell them that they will have to become expert in every field in which they are looking for a care/service provider. “Oh, we don’t license dentists anymore; just go study dentistry for a couple years, and then you’ll know whether your guy is a quack or not.” (I realize that this is a bit of a straw man, since you’re not actually calling for the abolition of dental licensing; it’s just meant to be a slight overstatement for the sake of a clear example.)

It’s the citizenry’s awareness of their own ignorance in the relevant fields, and the inability to address that ignorance in any feasible way, that makes them amenable to these kinds of licensing programs. Well, that combined with the apparent irresistibility of “public health” as an argument in contemporary political debate (which is why these sorts of things really only get off the ground in healthcare-type situations, and not in other fields of specialized knowledge. I don’t think that anyone is seriously arguing for state-mandated licensing of computer repairmen.)

It seems, off the cuff, that the most reasonable sort of compromise situation might look like self-regulating trades, with their own internal standards of conduct and certification; combined with beefed-up fraud laws, and the vigorous enforcement of same, to prevent BS pseudo-certification programs. This still might involve more state power than those in the hardcore libertarian camp are comfortable with, but I think that there’s a decent argument for this kind of consumer-protection as a public good.

I agree that that would be a good compromise, but I’m not a hardcore libertarian. It’s a nice dream, to think of such a compromise being enacted, but proponents of the regulatory state aren’t willing to compromise. They grant special powers of competency and neutrality to the government above and beyond any other organization, rendering all private organizations incapable of adequately carrying out such responsibilities.

Absent a complete nationalization of the physical fitness industry and a whole new federal police force to enforce standards and licensing, this regulation of yoga instructors will never work. Reason – you can always teach yoga and call it something else. Right now there are many trainers who simply teach basic yoga and pilates moves and call it “stretching” or “core conditioning”. I think pilates might be trademarked, but there is nothing to stop anyone teaching it, poorly or well. The same applies to yoga.

An interesting comparison here, though with significant differences, is with state attempts to regulate the massage industry. Here the unobtainable object is to keep massage from being used as a front for prostitution. Since untrained whores charge more than trained and licensed masseuses and since men looking for sex will not patronize non-sex-providing masseuses no matter how little they charge, there is no cartel protection aspect to this regulation. But it’s close to unenforceable overall; the best regulation can accomplish is occasional shutting down of large scale operations employing illegal aliens and these generally re-open quickly. Often they simply pay off the enforcers in cash or trade. Independent operators can offer “relaxation”, “aroma therapy”, “accupressure” or other euphemisms to avoid regulation of massage. Whores can be pretty much identified by higher prices, but if the whore waits for the customer to actually propose sex, she then has a defense of entrapment if the customer turns out to be an undercover cop.